Roswita
Fewer than a hundred women in Poland carry it, around 80, so most Poles have never met one. The name is Germanic at root and means "strong in fame".
Roswita Pronunciation
Roswita is pronounced ros-FEE-tah (/rɔsˈfita/).
What Roswita means
Where Roswita comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Roswita begins in Germanic speech. Two old elements sit inside it, hruod, meaning fame, and swinth, meaning strong. Read together they give the meaning kept here, strong in fame.
The name has a famous bearer. Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim, a canoness in tenth-century Saxony, wrote Latin plays and legends. She once glossed her own name as the "strong voice of Gandersheim," turning the Germanic roots into a small joke about herself. Her work survives, which makes her one of the earliest named women dramatists in Europe.
In Poland the name arrived through its German association, and a variant settled beside it, rozwita. A teacher reading a class register might pause once before saying it, then move on. On an official form at the urząd, Roswita and rozwita name the same person in two spellings. The sense stays fixed: strong in fame.
How many people are named Roswita
1 in 281798 women in Poland is named Roswita. 80 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #3981 among female names.
Roswita as a middle name
Roswita is a first name for 80 women in Poland and a middle name for another 18, an 82/18 split. In the women's middle-name ranking it sits 1741st, between Randia (18) and Sage (18).
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#1739 Rabia18
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#1740 Randia18
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#1741 Roswita18
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#1742 Sage18
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#1743 Sebastiana18